Review: My Summer in Seoul by Rachel Van Dyken
SYNOPSIS:
It’s not all K-dramas and happily ever afters.
Intern with Korea’s number one record label? Yes, please.
Find out there’s a huge scandal I need to help “manage”… not so much.
Add in the fact that I don’t recognize the “superstars” of the label and think they’re interns…
And my dream job quickly becomes more of a nightmare.
But I’m in Seoul, the one place that is beginning to feel more and more like home…
Except it isn’t home, and the drama surrounding the biggest K-pop group in the world, SWT, is consuming my every moment.
Spoiler alert. They hate me.
Everything I do is wrong: wrong clothes, wrong honorifics, wrong manners.
Till the leader of SWT takes pity on me.
But pity is dangerous when it comes from someone as beautiful as him.
Every SWT member is gorgeous, perfect, and cultivated to be an idol… lethal to a girl’s heart.
And sanity.
But fame plus a perfect face and voice don’t equal an easy life. As their comeback nears, the stakes rise higher.
Suicide watch…
Angry fans…
Threats…
All I want to do is survive.
But the price for survival might mean losing my heart.
And like a character in a K-drama, I’m not sure if there will be an actual happily ever after…
Or simply a lesson learned.
REVIEW:
*Book Received in Exchange for Honest Opinion/Review*
I don’t think I can start this book review without giving praise to the cover, which I absolutely adore. The bold colors are refreshing take on illustrated book covers trend. Secondly, I don’t think it would be fair to review without the following disclaimer…I am deep into the k-pop world; like I eat, sleep, breathe books and k-pop so I will be taking that into consideration in my review.
Now, one thing that Rachel Van Dyken excels at is writing groups of guys. She can write so much charm and charisma into guys just ‘being bros’ and that is definitely the case with SWT. I adored their contrasting personalities and how they all came together so seamlessly with endless support for one another. I also think Rachel flawlessly captures the true challenges that idols face, from the restrictive diets to the endless pressure, it’s truly heartbreaking. I think about this every time I see a comeback stage and I am so happy that someone is finally bringing it to center stage.
And while I enjoyed getting to know the rag-tag team of SWT, I wanted more of all of them. With the exception of Lucas, they all had me laughing out loud at some point. But I wished we could have seen perspectives other than Lucas and Grace; from Sookie’s struggles with dieting to Jay’s sexuality, I wanted to be in their heads and hear from them. Especially Jay, the potential that Rachel might someday write and LGBTQ+ couple has me extremely excited!
And in this case, the romance kind of fell to the backburner for me. I was so enamored by the group that the romance was more of an afterthought for me. I think this is because it took me a while to warm up to Grace. I found her to be clumsy, self-centered, and rude. Initially she kept on spying on Lucas while he was playing the piano and this rubbed me the wrong way…respect their boundaries and space. But also she seemed to cry and tear up over anything and I just wanted to yell this is about SWT, not you.
Eventually I did warm up to her and while the romance progressed I found myself conflicted. While there was definitely physical attraction, I thought on an emotional scale, that Grace and Lucas were strangers. There were no tender conversations or casual flirting so I would have liked a little more emotional progression to their relationship aside from bullying. And what I would have loved was if Lucas actually matured some over the course of the story.
The ending was cute and playful and definitely leaves room for the potential to expand the series further to other members of SWT, which I hope Rachel ultimately does because they were the real stars of this story.
LINKS:
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
